Worked as a temp for a law firm.
It was in some converted loft in Lahndan and had its own fitted kitchen with coffee machine and American-style giant fridge, because the firm was filthy rich.

One of the senior partners was on a diet at the time and was in a quasi-permanent bad mood, but allowed himself "cheat days" where he could basically eat whatever the hell he wanted all day and magically keep slimming. The arrival of this particular cheat day was heralded by his portly pinstriped form arriving at 07:00 and heading straight for the fridge with a large box of posh takeaway cakes.

Surely he wouldn't notice if just one of those cakes vanished from its box via a hitherto unexplained phenomenon of quantum cake tunneling.

I waited until 10:30, a time when I felt sure he'd be in a meeting with a client or in chambers or generally nowhere near the vicinity of the kitchen, before wandering off nonchalantly to make myself a coffee and investigate the contents of the box. Unfortunately, this was the exact time he chose to have a mid-morning coffee and an eclair, and he strode into the kitchen to find said eclair being lifted from the box by my impertinent early-twentysomething fingers.

A few moments later I was being escorted from the premises by the aforementioned senior partner and flung out onto the street with a parting cry of "STAY ABOUT FROM MY BINGE!".
(.Yeti.Get that down yer neck., Tue 3 Jun 2014, 14:56,
10 replies)

We've had loads of nutters
work at my place because it used to be a proper publishing house, where work would start at 10.30 and end just after midday when a bottle of wine would be passed around before heading off to the pub for the afternoon.But in the digital age they've had to up their game a bit, and now the offices are full of people in suits striding about purposefully and prodding buttons on their blackberries with serious expressions on their thick-rimmed-spectacled faces.One of the old-school types lasted a few years despite not really doing any kind of work, he'd just stagger about. But he did have one responsibility, and that was to press a button which would take edited content and publish it live to our research platform used by a number of blue chip companies around the globe.One morning, the fellow somehow managed to press the wrong button, and insert a private fantasy that he had typed out and saved to his desktop into the edited content before publishing it. So after he had left for the day, a search for the Equality Act 2010 would bring up the following abstract:

Equality Act 2010, An Act to make provision to require Ministers of the Crown to slip into your room when you are asleep, and gently touch your face. When you wake up you don't know who I am but then you recognise me. You roll over and smile, you want me so much, you want me there and then; and for connected purposes.

Despite a record number of complaints, this managed to stay online for about two and a half weeks.Edit: He got sacked. I forgot to say that.
(browserstill relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Wed 4 Jun 2014, 11:57,
3 replies)

Trefynwy isn't the most exciting
town to live in, especially as a teenager. I had a Saturday job in the local opticians, making the tea and ensuring all the specs on the stands were nice and clean. In a drawer amongst all the glasses that were due to be picked up I found a smaller case, and opening it found very posh looking monocle. Obviously this would raise a laugh that night at the pub, so I 'borrowed' it.Unfortunately not only did the manager see me in the pub wearing stolen goods, but I lost the bloody thing on the way home.To cut a long story short - I was sacked for eyepiece in Monmouth.
(insignificantsnivellinglittleturdI Like Peas, Thu 29 May 2014, 16:44,
4 replies)

"Your body language is telling me that you don't want the job".
I turned up for my first day of a new job. I was supposed to be writing training manuals for a woman and her beauty business.

I tried to plug in my laptop. "Let me do it!" she shouted, diving beneath the desk: "Health and safety! It's not safe for you to do it".

She then handed me a sheath of typed notes. "This is what I want you to type up. I wrote it on my computer, I just want you to put it into a nice format."

"If you've already done it on your computer", I asked, "could you email me the file? I could just reformat it then. It makes more sense than me typing it from scratch.""No. I don't want to get a virus from your computer.""You won't get a virus from emailing me a file.""No. I don't want to do that. Just type it up."

I started typing up the many pages of notes. While I did so, she stood over me. After five minutes of staring at me, she spoke: "I don't think you want this job, do you?""Excuse me?""Your body language is telling me that you don't want the job.""Excuse me?""Look at you, with your shoulders all hunched up. You think this job's beneath you, don't you.""No, I want this job. That's why I've turned up to do it. You don't seem to want me here though.""That's right, I don't want you here because your body language tells me that you don't want this job. You should go now."

Baffled, I closed my laptop and went to unplug it.

"No!" she shouted, diving under the desk again. "Health and safety! I must unplug it for you."

I grabbed my laptop and left. It was less than forty minutes from arrival to sacking. It remains one of the strangest - and definitely the shortest - jobs I've ever done.
(biscuitbiscuitis in ur garden, watering ur plantz, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:21,
43 replies)

I worked as a despatch rider in the 1980s.
My first job was with Addison Lee, who were at the time probably the top firm of couriers in London.

My first job was to take something from an office right next to Kings cross, to another office near Great Portland street. This was a distance of roughly a mile.

I picked it up and set off. 4 hours later I called them to tell them I couldn't find great portland street. A short discussion established I was in fact in Croydon, some 15 miles south of where I was supposed to be.

They called me back into the office, and when I arrived, about 3 hours later, gave me the number of a shitty little company in old street who weren't really bothered if their riders were shit.

when i was a student, i was working in a letting agency
we had a cleaner called marc. marc was responsible for cleaning, naturally, and also for doing inventories. he was shit at both. his idea of an inventory was "carpet", so that it was impossible to tell who was responsible for damage when the next tenant checked out. and as a cleaner, well, let's just say that he failed to notice when three disgruntled tenants (brothers, their mum must have been so proud) shat on the floor and wiped their arses on the curtains.

on top of this, marc smelled. oh god, he smelled. he smelled like a tramp corpse with butt rape and stilton inside it. it was 40 years of cigarettes and garlic and beer and sweat, all distilled into one seldom washed package. and, to make matters worse, he insisted on calling clients, "ze geezer" to their faces (he was french). clients did not like being called "geezers".

one day he was dispatched to a little house about 25 miles from the office to hand over keys to the new tenants. an hour later, he was back - the keys didn't work. the manager had decided that it was his last day, so she took the opportunity whilst he was in the office of hauling him upstairs and sacking him. this did not go down well. we adduced from the shouts of "fucking beetch" that he did not want to work his one month's notice.

he then stomped downstairs and up to the male director, to demand if the "fucking beetch" was telling the truth. assured that she was, he stormed out. we were all agog, as you can imagine.

about 6 hours later, i was signing up a new tenant at the counter, when i saw him weaving up to the shop door. clearly he had spent the past 6 hours in the pub. he was clutching a shitty little bunch of muddy daffodils that he had clearly nicked from the tiny village green next to the shop. the directors were all out, and we didn't know what to do. including the customers, we all watched open mouthed as he staggered in and weaved around the office, presenting these half-dead weeds to each of the girls with exaggerated courtesy. finally he turned to the second-in-command, who was very friendly with the "fucking beetch", and said in this chilling voice:

"and YOU. YOU do not get a flow-errr. because you are a fucking beetch as well!"

fortunately the team of plumbers/joiners turned up at that exact moment and persuaded him to leave. as we watched his reeking back disappear for the last time, the phone rang. i apologised again to my customer and picked it up. it's pretty common in that job to get angry phone calls - tenants blame you for everything from a leaking toilet to their own PMT. but this guy had good reason to shout.

"THIS IS MR SMITH OF 65 BLACK LANE. WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THAT FUCKING MARC TWAT TO COME BACK SINCE 10 O'CLOCK THIS MORNING...."

Sacked on vaious grounds..
I worked for about 4 days for a company that sold tile products, but the MD and the Office Manager (Mother and daughter) thought that it was way more important than that. I was watching over the web orders on email and taking sales calls.

We had a lunch half hour, when it was fine for everyone to eat and the phone system was switched to a "call back at 12:30pm" message. One day, I'd forgotten my lunch, so I told everyone I was popping out (no-one said a thing), walked the 200m to the greasy spoon on the estate, got a sandwich, walked back and ate my dinner on the way. Took me 15 mins max. Sat back down with 10 mins to spare.

Called into the Office Managers room, "We don't leave the premises".

"I'd forgotten my lunch, and I was back way in time!!"

"You'll just have to not forget again. What happens if someone calls??" the manager said to me.

"The phones are switched off.." I reply to be shouted at "What if its a call for me that I need you to answer!! Consider this a formal warning".

Next day, I remembered my lunch, but because my son had been up all night being sick, I hadn't shaved - 1 days growth which to me was a slight blonder colour to the face. 20 minutes into the day called into the MD's office, "Here is your written warning for incorrect attire". I asked her "Where does it say in the introduction pack or in the interview that I need to be clean shaven? - its a call centre" get told to go back to my desk. I get "sent to Coventry" by the other staff and I'm realising this is not the place for me.

So I work through the morning, taking orders for their pointless products and lunch time comes. Phones switched over, other 3 phone operators talking and ignoring me so I get out book to read for 10 minutes.

"Strump, come in here now" comes a voice.

"Do you think the company wants to portray the image of people who read at work?" - really wasn't sure how to answer this.

"You are not the material we feel will progress our company and we ask you to walk out the door and the rest of your belongings will be posted to you. You are not allowed back to your desk".

"Bollocks, my keys, phone and wallet are in there and I'm not leaving those". So I walk to my desk and one of the other office staff watches me take out my stuff, while the other two are stood, making a corridor to the entrance. The next thing I know, the on-site security have arrived and because I have been "causing trouble", they grab my arms and are ordered to walk me out the office and off the entire industrial estate.

Well, they walk me to the office door, apologise and just say "This happens about once a week - hope you work somewhere better than this next time".

Having left a previous job due to an injury that was entirely my fault
I found myself doing some temp work in a call centre. One of my fellow temps was sacked on the first day, when during an argument with a customer, they decided to get the upper hand by pointing out in the most threatening manner possible that they know where they live.
(Muns, Fri 30 May 2014, 14:33,
8 replies)

Back when I had escaped the tyranny of dealing with the general public I got a job as a driver
and an assistant field survey technician for Hutchison Communications, the company that would later be rebranded 'Orange'.

Driving a Discovery I'd transport the lead tech up to a site where the planners decided one cell would be best served by the mast. To check its viability we'd tow a temporary mast (15 or 45 metre telescopic on an trailer)up the muddy Welsh hillside in question, erect the mast and secure it with guy ropes attached to metre-long metal pickets banged into the ground with a sledgehammer. On the top of the mast was an antenna hooked into a 1.86GHz signal generator in the base to simulate a cell base station signal. Getting up these muddy Welsh hillsides is why the vehicle of choice was a 4x4 of proper offroading ability -but even then when you're towing an extra 1.5 tons of telescopic mast things could get hairy, so the car had the mandatory winch fitted.

Then I'd drive a route around the perimeter of the proposed cell and the lead tech would read and log the signal strength to see if it would suffice.

The disco had been extensively modified, behind the back seat was the spectrum analyser, receiver, monochrome 80 column text display laptop logging the position (using a LORAN receiver or whatever the precursor of GPS was) and field strength to be mapped later on back at base. To facilitate this rather hefty parasitic load on the 12V systems a second alternator was fitted to the engine just for the electronics.

Other times we'd go to a newly built mast before the network was open to the public, drive around the cell perimeter again but instead, dial in on the network to a selection of answerphones that had been loaded with speaking books, so as to simulate voice traffic, and note if there were any dropped calls and noting if there was the proper handover from one sector to the next as you went around the mast.

Finally at some time we'd put a xenon high intensity lamp on top of a 15 metre mast and another team would put a similar mast where the proposed line-of-site microwave link was supposed to be established and remotely trip a film camera (before digitals existed) on top of the other mast to snap in the direction of the first map- developing the film later the picture would show a tiiiiiiny little pinprick of light to show there was nothing in between the proposed microwave link.

All good fun, vaguely outdoorsy, lots of man-banter and some interesting tales from my lead tech who used to be in REME and had been around the world etc.

All fine and good, except two months in my gran had a stroke. The hospital she was taken to was about 20 miles away from where I lived in Edgbaston so I asked if I could borrow the survey vehicle overnight to visit her as I had no car at the time and the public transport would have stranded me from getting home.

I dutifully went up to visit gran, then coming home realised I had nothing in for tea, so I went to park up behind Edgbaston Tesco.

Oh hang on, it says 'maximum height 6 feet 6 inches' at the entrance to the car park. There's a rigid steel bar across the top of the entrance. This is a Land Rover Discovery, the roofline is pretty tall....flip down the sun visor where I was sure there was a sticker saying how high the car was. 196cm? That's (doing mental arithmetic) about the same.... maybe if I slide under it slowly it'll be alright?

Driving cautiously at about 0.3mph I tried to edge under the sign- so far so good. OK, must have made it. Nudged up to 1mph.

With a sickening screech the base of the LORAN antenna (which stood an extra two inches above the roofline and I'd completely forgotten about) transmitted the force of meeting the steel bar through to the roof of the Discovery, which buckled along the width of the car and the sheared base (screw-mounted into the roof instead of magmounted) and antenna dropped off onto the floor.

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT.

Backed up and out, retrieved the antenna, drove off home gloomy about the prospect of a bollocking in the morning.

Next day I turned up to work before anyone else and tried to obtain a replacement LORAN antenna but it was no good- the base was knackered and the folded roofline was obvious to anyone with a working set of eyeballs. I came clean to the lead tech and fortunately that day the job didn't need positional information so we busied about getting the day's work done.

Returned to base at the end of the day to be summoned to see the manager. "Sit down" he said with quiet menace.

Very quietly he explained to me that the car would be out of commission for a few days while repairs were made- the team's target would slip ,and I shouldn't have gone out again in the same car. I was hopeful that this was a dressing down but it culminated in 'You're a liability. Get out.'

Rather upset I left to get the train back home. Small Heath train station was grim at the best of times but that day it had the black gloom of despair to add to its charm.
(Rotating Wobbly HatThat's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 29 May 2014, 19:03,
1 reply)

Dynamite
An old guy I used to know got a job by lying. Lying about having experience with dynamite.

All started well enough, but then he was left in the boondocks with a crate of dynamite and some rocky ground where a road was supposed to go.

At lunch the supervisor turned up. The crate which was supposed to have lasted all week had lasted half the morning. He'd had a lot of fun though and didn't mind being paid up for the rest of the day and told to not bother turning up tomorrow.
(xixax, Fri 30 May 2014, 13:10,
11 replies)

I lost a job at a butchers for having sex with the girl who was, bizarrely, employed to just slice bacon.
Absolute joke.
(Muns, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:32,
16 replies)

I was supposed to fit a protective grill over the exhaust vents on this space station but I got wankered on Romulan ale and forgot
lol Doctor Who
(Dr. Shambolicje suis charlie, Sat 31 May 2014, 17:39,
9 replies)

I got sacked for "stealing" my own stuff
2005. I was one of the main chefs in a busy, very trendy and overpriced cafe. I had a baby-faced boss, who thought he was god's gift to women. I didn't fancy him, so he had a grudge. He treated all the younger workers like shit, unless he was seducing them. etc. etc.

A 15-year-old girl on work experience was set to work cleaning the toilets and serving at the bar. I objected and the other staff downed tools with me. I not only got sacked, but also accused of stealing MY OWN recipes when I left. This was a feeble attempt to stop me claiming benefits, or the pay I was owed.

So ...I went back late at night and drew a huge purple cock on the front signage. Took 'em ages to get it off. Childish, yeah, but friends made a point of swinging by for months afterwards to give me updates on it.
(IHateSproutsis baking a huge pie shaped like an enormous pie, Thu 29 May 2014, 22:19,
36 replies)

I think I'm being sacked now
Management stopped talking to me. I haven't had a work assignment in four months. I know they hate confrontation, so they're probably screwing up the courage to do it, but they can't seem to find anybody to plunge the knife. Can't blame them, really. But for the moment, I get full pay and benefits to read everything on B3ta. It's a Kafkaesque nightmare. Locked in amber.
(Perv With A Doghad his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Thu 29 May 2014, 20:33,
5 replies)

This PUA has never been sacked. Being sacked is for spineless pussies and not fine ALPHA MALE SPECIMENS like myself.
Last month they tried to get rid of me because no work was getting done on the third floor. All the sluts up there were now spending all their time discussing what I did with them last time I took them out. Since mastering THE GAME earlier this year I've wined, dined and fucked all of them, some in groups of two or three, and whilst there is some proper fine ass up there this ALPHA MALE don't like to stay in one place, but keep moving like a TRUE PLAYER. So yeah, when my manager called me into her office, my ALPHA MALE pheromones overcame her and she forgot what she called me in for. Instead I put that dirty bitch to the sword right there on the desk. Damn, I made her squeal. But that same day she recommended me for promotion. What can I say, you either got it or you don't.
(spanishfly 2, Mon 2 Jun 2014, 20:37,
9 replies)

Not sacked either, which was a surprise
In my younger days I started "working" for a large publicly-funded organisation where promotion was the inevitable result of serving out your time. So despite me being a lazy, feckless cunt who thought that turning up on time and attending meetings was the full extent of my duties and responsibilities, I progressed through the organisation to become head of my department for a number of years.

I finally retired a couple of years ago and received a considerable golden handshake and index-linked pension, despite there being no sign that I'd had any impact on the organisation.

Unfortunately, during my time there, various budget cuts meant that no one was able to rise through the ranks as I had done and my old position remains vacant to this day.

If you're a bullshit artist who can give the appearance of actually giving a toss, while sitting on your expensively-besuited arse in your corner office on the sixth floor, it might be worth your while to apply for the post of Head of Children and Young People's Welfare at the BBC.
(Snappyukgets BIGGER with free sample., Mon 2 Jun 2014, 11:06,
4 replies)

Air conditioning grate
Always replace the air conditioning grate when you're done, they said. Otherwise there'll be no filter to stop all the random crap circulating around the office getting into the vents and buggering up the fans. Then the client'll get sick building syndrome and we'll get audited and booted out.

Sacked on the spot. A tad unfair I thought. Ended up getting more money (with the help of a solicitor) than I'd earned in wages the whole time I was there.

I feel like I won that one.

The solicitor did have a good chuckle at it though.
(NoStringsTastes like zombies!!, Sat 31 May 2014, 23:40,
6 replies)

Sacked due to religious differences
Working as an audio/visual tech guy at a teaching hospital I was one day partnered with one of the other guys and was working on a lectern in a lecture theatre. My screwdriver slipped and I managed to stab myself in the other hand eliciting a

"Jesus Christ!!!"

Turns out the other guy was an evangelical Christian. He toddled off to the boss and complained about me taking the Lord's name in vain and offending his religious sensibilities. The boss hauls me in and tells me to apologise. I ask what for.

"For offending his religious sensibilities""Oh, tell him to grow up. I stabbed myself, I could have said many, many things more offensive than Jesus Christ""Granted. Still we have to be careful not to offend our co-workers' religious sensibilities"

I take a long slow look at the boss's Black Sabbath T-shirt and pentagram pendant, point to them and say

"What, you mean like you do?"

Sacked.

Moral of the story: so long as you're the boss it's okay to piss off the Christians who work for you.
(Dildo Buggerdestroyed a ring on, Sat 31 May 2014, 10:34,
32 replies)

This was always going to be a gamble.
I got the flick for placing a bet or 19.Years ago I worked in a small kitchen as a sous chef. I worked with two other blokes, Don and Charlie. Our boss the head chef was called Tex. His idea of work was to peer over the top of the paper and shout orders at us.As you would imagine the usual rush times were busy but being such a small kitchen and well staffed it was very easy to keep clean and take stock of. Which left us frequently with hours of free time on our hands between shifts. So we all used to watch the geegees (horse racing) on tv. Eventually this led us to making bets with each other. Some times we'd win sometimes we'd lose - we deliberately kept the bets small because we really weren't out to filch each other out of our meagre pay-checks. We even developed a working slang; a "chunk" was $5, a "piece" was $10 and "slab" was $20 - which also happened to be about the price of a carton (or slab) of beer at the time.This betting habit gradually began to encroach on our working time as well. Often even when we were flat-chat either Don, Charlie or myself would surreptitiously sneak into the back office to check on a race and then return to make book with the other two shouting their bets out - "I'll have a piece on no. 7" or "Put me down for a slab on 18" or something like that. Now Tex had noticed this increasing activity and the impact it was having on our work so he called us aside one day and warned us to keep it on the quiet because if it kept us from going hammer and tongs during our busy periods "heads would roll" as he put it. Advice which we promptly ignored and got straight back into trying to see who could lose the most money to each other each day.

Eventually it came to a head one day when the owner Owen Perkins turned up and caught us at it. Now Owen was a bourbon swilling beast of a man. But he was staunchly against any form of gambling. Once he'd seen Charlie watching the tv and then come out to take our bets - at a time when the orders were mounting up on the bench he stormed into Tex's back office, slammed the door and shouted at him for a good ten minutes and then departed after giving us all a filthy scowl. Tex strolled out of his office looking brow-beaten. "I warned you guys," he said. "I told you someone would have to go." He took me aside and explained to me that since mine was the bet Owen had heard Charlie take, I was out on my ear. I protested meekly but to be honest I knew that there was little to be done. "I've got to know, just out of interest - what was the bet?" Tex asked me. "I had a piece on Don's and my own mount." was my reply.
(mankwhistle, Thu 29 May 2014, 23:36,
7 replies)

We get through editors here at a rate of knots!

Not because they get sacked, mind: they all leave when they find out that I'm a creepy pervert with a Ned's Atomic Dustbin haircut, chronic halitosis and a natty line in balloon-based millinery.
(Richard mcbeefthe silliest boy on /talk 2018, Thu 29 May 2014, 15:09,
9 replies)

My dog was an ex-police dog, but couldn't be trained to their standards.
he was sacked. The sack was then closed, weighed down with bricks and slung into a canal.
(Muns, Wed 4 Jun 2014, 19:01,
5 replies)

I once had a job, ferrying supermodels around in my Honda Accord.
They paid me in cocaine, and all I had to do was to subjugate their bushes.All was going well (I was getting more poon then I knew what to do with), until I woke up.Turned out that I'd hit the sack, and dreamt that I was George!Long story short, I went for a bath to calm my nerves, and accidentally pissed in my own mouth.
(monster munch- it's cheeseburgers, all the way down, Wed 4 Jun 2014, 14:03,
19 replies)

Be sure your sins...
I worked with a contractor once. Since he was paid by the hour, at some astronomical rate, he was happy to work through the weekend.

He was less happy when he arrived on Monday morning to find a stack of printouts on his chair: a log of all the porn sites he'd visited while supposedly working over the weekend...
(moon monkeyis busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 4 Jun 2014, 11:57,
4 replies)

I once took on a Spanish waiter.
It turned out to be an English actor putting on a terrible accent.

I worked with a guy who was fired for fiddling his expenses
He took advantage of the fact that the finance dept had hired a bunch of temps to deal with expenses and forged his boss's signature on the claim form for about 6 months.

His was rumbled when a random spot check uncovered dozens of meals at posh restaurants at the weekends which were obviously not work related. All told he racked up a bill of about £6K which he was forced to pay back after he was canned or have the police involved.

The best part of the story was not the act, but rather the rumours that swept the industry afterwards. My personal favourite was that he was rugby tackled at Heathrow Airport by his line manager as he tried to flee the country.
(BinDipper, Wed 4 Jun 2014, 10:19,
Reply)